Lafayette-based Florine and his Japanese partner Hirayama set a record time for scaling the “nose of El Capitan” in Yosemite National Park on Wednesday. The pair made it to the top in two hours, 43 minutes, 33 seconds in their third attempt at eclipsing a record set by German brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber.

Florine first held the speed-climbing record in 1990 and has since had to reclaim it six times. But he says he has never fretted about the competition.

“I’m super-psyched when other people go after (the record),” Florine said. “It’s an honor to you and to the accomplishment of doing it.”

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy being the record holder.

“I don’t have that great inclination to go and break my own record,” Florine said. “I’m more interested in going in and improving on someone else’s record.”

Improve the record, he did. Florine and Hirayama shaved two minutes and 12 seconds off the Huber brothers’ 2007 record.

As for his wife, Jackie, climbing is something in which she trusts Florine. She is an experienced climber herself, and the only female climber to make it to the top of El Capitan by herself.

“She trusts, for the most part, that I will do the safe thing,” Florine said. “She knows that I don’t have a death wish. I like climbing so much that I want to do it tomorrow. I don’t want to get hurt.”

When discussing the prospect of hitting the rock to reclaim his record again, Florine is pretty confident on his stance in the matter.

“Anybody who knows me knows that I’ll just go back up and beat it,” he said.

Violent police encounters in California last year led to the deaths of 157 people and six officers, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday in a report that provides the first statewide tally on police use-of-force incidents.